ubuntu-ngo team mailing list archive

[Daniel Holbach <daniel.holbach@xxxxxxxxxx>]

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Andrew SB schrieb:
> First of all, just want to say that I'm excited to see that this is a
> subject that people are thinking about. For many reasons, I think that
> the NGO and non-profit world makes a lot of sense as an area for
> Ubuntu to move into, and I can't wait to hear about the discussions
> that were had at UDS about the issue.

Here a quick summary of the things we talked about at the session at UDS
(for all of those of you who weren't there):

 - Old machines: there are problems with the transition from Windows,
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RecycleOldHardware (Needs Love), thing
like Old CD drives (burn slower?)

 - Regions without Internet: No Ubuntu packages, how to deal with
Offline Content (Wikipedia for schools: schools-wikipedia.org, Project
Gutenberg)

 - TALK ABOUT IT: Need to blog more about the good stuff that people are
doing with Ubuntu, Find out how many / Which NGOs participate in
Software Freedom Day? Find out more about initiatives like
http://www.sicamp.org/ (bringing technical people and NGOs together),
Invite NGOs to LUG and LoCo meetings!

 - Education: Document which applications to use?

 - Best practices: Documentation missing for Migration, NGO Organisation
(Mailing lists, Wiki, etc.), Which applications are best suitable? No
Internet connection (have mirror with you, security updates?, etc.),
Offline wiki tarball like Italian Wiki
(http://wiki.ubuntu-it.org/OfflineWiki)? It'd help to have an effort to
get documentation done in terms of setting up infrastructure for the
organisation itself (often server stuff) and setting up LTSP for
educational use, Package help.ubuntu.com(?)

 - No alternatives: Donations (CRM: Packaging CiviCRM / SugarCRM would
help a lot), Accounting



ACTIONS:

The following people agreed to think about and at least research the
following topics:

 - Efrain Valles (documentation)
 - Laura Czaikowsky (inviting-ngos-to-locos)
 - Jonathan Carter (blog, docs)
 - Kevin McDermott (crm)
 - Paolo Sammicheli (collecting experiences in LoCo)
 - Alex Muntada (documentation, government apps)
 - Hardik Dalwadi (Inviting NGO's to LOCO, Documentation)
 - Daniel Holbach (offline media, NGO blog, inviting-ngos-to-locos, crm)


> Just to kick off some discussion, we should probably think about and
> define some use cases. A few that I can think of:
> 
> 1) Distributing Ubuntu-based computers to those that need them.
>   * OEM installs? Documentation? What other things can we do to make
> this easier on the NGO side?
>   * Support for users once they get it home... Any special cases not
> covered by existing community support mechanisms? Offline support?

Some of the things are mentioned above already. To me it feels like we
should liaise with the Installer and the Server team to find out what
kind of documentation they have and make sure that for the beginning we
at least collect that information.


> 2) Running Ubuntu in a community center or similar environment.
>   * LTSP? Guest Account? Account lockdowns (Pessulus [1])?

Stéphane Graber is a good person to talk to about this. Shall we create
NGO/KnowledgeBase or something and just collect links in there for a start?


> 3) In the NGO's office.
>   * I think this is an important target. Ubuntu shouldn't just be the
> "cheap windows" that they can give away to clients. Making Ubuntu
> something that a NGO could use in all aspects of its work also makes
> it easier for them to feel comfortable deploying and supporting it
> with their clients.
>   * What tools are needed beyond the normal desktop? Specialized
> needs? CRMs (customer/constituent relationship management systems)?
>     - SugarCRM seems to be a popular choice. [2] Has applications
> beyond NGOs. Needs-packaging bug. [3]
>     - CiviCRM is specifically focused on advocacy, non-profit and
> non-governmental groups. [4] Highly extensible. Can integrate with
> both Drupal and Joomla. (How would we decide which version to
> package?) Seems to have a strong community.
>   * Back-office server / Web server / Web presence. Is there more we
> can do on these fronts than is already happening in ubuntu-server? Any
> special needs for a NGO?

I can't comment on all of them, but Kevin and I wanted to have a look
into packaging one of the CRMs.


> What can we do to encourage adoption that doesn't require technical
> changes? Well, getting the stories of people that are already use
> Ubuntu for their NGOs seems to be a good idea. As Daniel's blog post
> shows, there's already quite a few. [5] There are probably many more
> beyond those responses. I see that someone (Daniel?) has already set
> up a blog. [6] I hope/assume that we can use that space to share those
> stories. Maybe use interviews to do so? (Daniel, I swear I'll get to
> that MOTU interview soon. :-) )

Yes, I set up the blog and Jonathan and I wanted to talk about
populating it with some stories about NGOs that make use of Ubuntu.


> I've heard mentions in the past of LoCo Teams working with local
> non-profits to distribute Ubuntu on donated old machines. Is there
> more we can do to encourage this? Targeted promotional materials?
> Should we send out a mailing to one of the LoCo lists looking for
> people interested? What lessons can we learn from their experiences
> that we should keep in mind as we move forward with this project?

Hardik and Laura are having a look into this.


> There also seem to be a number of organizations that are pushing
> opensource more generally in the nonprofit sector. [7][8] Anyone know
> of more? Making connections with them could be useful. If nothing
> else, they are probably good sources for looking at NGO use cases.
> 
> Looking forward to hearing your ideas,

Thanks a lot for writing this all up!


> [1] http://live.gnome.org/Pessulus
> [2] http://www.sugarcrm.com/crm/
> [3] https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/bugs/253220
> [4] http://civicrm.org/
> [5] http://daniel.holba.ch/blog/?p=422
> [6] http://ubuntungo.wordpress.com/
> [7] http://www.nosi.net/
> [8] http://www.tacticaltech.org/
> 
> PS: I CCed people that have signed up for the team, but don't seem to
> be subscribed to the mailing list according to Launchpad. I hope
> that's ok, and apologize if someone gets this twice.

I sent a mail to everbody who's not on the list yet.

Thanks again and ROCK ON everybody!

Have a great day,
 Daniel
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